ALBANY, N.Y. (January 21, 2005) -- Holocaust
scholar and author Daniel Goldhagen will speak
at a reception for the Center for Jewish Studies
on Jan. 27, 2005, 5:45 p.m., in the University
Art Museum on the uptown campus. The event is
free and open to the public.

“Daniel Goldhagen is one of the most important
Holocaust studies scholars of our day,” said
Mark A. Raider, director of the Center and chair
of the Judaic Studies Department. “He has single-handedly
changed the nature of the international debate
over the Holocaust and the history of Nazi Germany.
His runaway bestselling book, Hitler’s Willing
Executioners, was nothing short electrifying
and proved to be a turning point for the way
the public and the academy understand the place
of the Holocaust in history.”

Goldhagen, a former Harvard University professor
and leading student of the Holocaust, is best
known for Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust (Alfred A. Knopf,
1996), a highly controversial book that sparked
an international firestorm on the Holocaust
and the history of Nazi Germany. To date, Hitler’s
Willing Executioners has been published
in more than a dozen languages. More recently,
Goldhagen published A Moral
Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in
the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). He has appeared on
PBS's "News Hour," "Nightline,"
"Larry King Live," "This Week
with David Brinkley," and dozens of American,
European, and Israeli news shows, and is a frequent
contributor to the New
York Times Magazine, the New
York Times op-ed page, Commentary,
the New Republic,
the Forward, and
other leading publications.

“Dr. Goldhagen’s appearance at the University
illustrates the importance of the Center for
Jewish Studies for the campus community and
the Capital Region,” said Alan Goldberg, chairman
of the Center’s advisory board and president
of First Albany. “We are committed to educating
the students and the community as a whole about
the significance of Jewish civilization and
understanding the complexity of the world we
inhabit.”

UAlbany is home to more than 16,000 students,
including the ninth largest concentration of
Jewish students on any college campus in the
country. The Center for Jewish Studies draws
on an advisory board made up of Capital Region
leaders as well as alumni and supporters from
across New York. To date, the Center has raised
approximately $1.25 million in private sector
pledges and gifts toward endowing the Center
and a new professorship in European Jewish studies,
with expertise in the Holocaust.

The University at Albany's broad mission of
excellence in undergraduate and graduate education,
research and public service engages 17,000 diverse
students in nine degree-granting schools and
colleges. For more information about this internationally
ranked institution, visit www.albany.edu.
For UAlbany's extensive roster of faculty experts,
visit www.albany.edu/news/experts.htm.